r, Ling
rewarded the person before him greatly beyond his expectation, and
hurried without delay to his own chamber.

XI

For many hours Ling remained in his room, examining in his mind all
passages, either in his own life or in the lives of others, which might
by any chance have influence on the event before him. In this thorough
way he became assured that the competition and its results, his journey
to Si-chow with the encounter in the cypress wood, the flight of the
incapable and treacherous Mandarin, and the battle of Ki, were all,
down to the matter of the smallest detail, parts of a symmetrical and
complete scheme, tending to his present condition. Cheered and upheld
by this proof of the fact that very able deities were at work on
his behalf, he turned his intellect from the entrancing subject to a
contemplation of the manner in which his condition would enable him to
frustrate the uninventive villainies of the obstinate person Li Keen,
and to provide a suitable house and mode of living to which he would be
justified in introducing Mian, after adequate marriage ceremonies had
been observed between them. In this endeavour he was less successful
than he had imagined would be the case, for when he had first fully
understood that his body was of such a substance that nothing was
wanting to transmute it into fine gold but the absence of the living
spirit, he had naturally, and without deeply examining the detail,
assumed that so much gold might be considered to be in his possession.
Now, however, a very definite thought arose within him that his own
wishes and interests would have been better secured had the benevolent
spirits who undertook the matter placed the secret within his knowledge
in such a way as to enable him to administer the fluid to some very
heavy and inexpensive animal, so that the issue which seemed inevitable
before the enjoyment of the riches could be entered upon should not
have touched his own comfort so closely. To a person of Ling's refined
imagination it could not fail to be a subject of internal reproach that
while he would become the most precious dead body in the world, his
value in life might not be very honourably placed even by the most
complimentary one who should require his services. Then came the
thought, which, however degraded, he found himself unable to put quite
beyond him, that if in the meantime he were able to gain a sufficiency
for Mian and himself, even her pure and deli